Category: regulations

Sixty years ago I worked as a plate scrubber and errand boy in a Swedish bakery. In one corner of the bakery stood the oven, a giant cement and stone contraption weighing at least 50 tons. It was run on electricity, turning on every night at 10 P.M. and turning itself off at 5 A.M. First in the morning we baked the Danishes and other good stuff that required the highest heat, and as the day wore on and the oven cooled off, other breads were baked in the order of temperature need. It took some planning, but the price difference between night rates and day rates made it all worthwhile.

This brings me to a truly smart electricity meter.

It would charge the customer at the current cost of generation + transmission cost + utility profit, displaying the current cost at any given time of the day.

The customer would have the right to sell back electricity to the net at the current cost of generation – transmission cost – utility profit.

Knowing the current true price of energy the customer can then delay turning on the clothes dryer until the price goes below an acceptable level. He could take a look at the current price and decide to turn off the air conditioner rather than pay $1.20 per KW, or she could decide: It is worth it.

By making the user rather than the power company decide how and when electricity is used and produced this will bring immense benefits:

Many users will decide to buy a backup generator with battery, charge the battery when the price is low, and discharge the battery when the price is high. If there is excess battery capacity, he can even sell back the excess at the inflated price. And if the price is high enough it is cheaper to use the generator.

This will have immense benefits on the grid, lessening peak demand and increasing the off peak use.

And best of all, should the grid fail, there will be enough generating capacity to run the refrigerators and essential stuff until power is restored.

What prevents this from being realized?

Politicians and the power companies desire to maintain total control over how the net is used. Political regulators hate to give decision making power back to the people.

Scientists have been warning since the 1980s that strong policies were needed to limit emissions. Those warnings were ignored, and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have since built up to potentially dangerous levels. So the hour is late.

But after 20 years of largely fruitless diplomacy, the governments of the world are finally starting to take the problem seriously. A deal reached in Paris in December commits nearly every country to some kind of action.

Religious leaders like Pope Francis are speaking out. Low-emission technologies, such as electric cars, are improving. Leading corporations are making bold promises to switch to renewable power and stop forest destruction. Around the world, many states and cities are pledging to go far beyond the goals set by their national governments.

What is still largely missing in all this are the voices of ordinary citizens.

Because politicians have a hard time thinking beyond the next election, they tend to tackle hard problems only when the public rises up and demands it.

My answer to Question 13. Is there any reason for hope?

Yes there is. Thanks to the last election the Paris agreement will not be enforced. It is a horrible agreement anyhow, reducing our CO2 emissions immediately and allowing China to keep increasing until 2030, by which time their emissions will be six times as big as ours. Already China is burning 47% of the coal burned in the world, and poor countries still need to get electrified. India is also exempt, and their needs are even bigger than China’s. With the Paris agreement the poorest countries would still use dried cow dung as cooking fuel.

We now have a great opportunity to turn from going after CO2 and address real pollution and environmental degradation. We have immense environmental problems. The water in the American South-West is spoken for, the prairie aquifers are being depleted, water and soil pollution lurks everywhere. We are over-fertilizing our lawns and agricultural fields, not managing wildfires properly, adding red tape to red tape. All environmental action should be regional, such as the Chesapeake Bay Watershed program. Thanks to persuading even the Amish to use proper fertilizing methods, such as not putting out manure just before a thunderstorm, put up manure barriers next to streams and so on, Chesapeake Bay might yet be saved.

It makes no sense to make electric cars as long as the bulk of electricity comes from fossil fuels. Fossil fuels should be reserved for airplane transportation since they have no good alternative.

We need to have a crash program in Thorium based nuclear electricity production, and when enough production capacity is established, then is the time to produce electrical cars.

We need to leave this world a cleaner and better place than when we entered it, and the best way to have a chance to leave more production resources for our grand-children is to switch most of our electricity production to Thorium as a feedstock. There is a million years supply of Thorium in the world, all other material are more limited. Wind and solar will not do it, it takes more power than that to solve our needs.

President Trump last week issued an executive order that has created considerable stir. It read: “I hereby proclaim that the immigrant and nonimmigrant entry into the United States of aliens from countries referred to in section 217(a)(12) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1187(a)(12), would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, and I hereby suspend entry into the United States, as immigrants and nonimmigrants, of such persons for 90 days from the date of this order.” And it targets Syrians specifically. “I hereby proclaim that the entry of nationals of Syria as refugees is detrimental to the interests of the United States and thus suspend any such entry until such time as I have determined that sufficient changes have been made to the USRAP to ensure that admission of Syrian refugees is consistent with the national interest.”

Searching through INA 8 the countries of concern are defined “The order bars all people hailing from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.”

The restrictions used to be for only four of the seven countries, but the Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act of 2015 added Libya, Somalia, and Yemen as three countries of concern,

The word Muslim is never mentioned in the order, nor is Muslim Majority countries.

The total population in the seven countries mentioned is: Iraq, 31 million, Iran 75, Libya 6, Somalia 9, Sudan 39 , Syria 21 and Yemen about 24 million, for a total of 205 million out of a total Muslim population of 1.7 billion in the world. That means that 88% of all Muslims are not affected by this 90 day review, only Syrian refugees are mentioned, and only that the review will take more than 90 days and require further executive and legislative action.

The executive order was written in haste, and it became obvious it would have been better if the words “excluding green card holding aliens” had been added to “suspend entry”.

Realizing the mistake, President Trump wasted no time to clarify and amend the executive order exempting green card holders.

President Trump issued an executive order that has created considerable stir. It reads: “I hereby proclaim that the immigrant and nonimmigrant entry into the United States of aliens from countries referred to in section 217(a)(12) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1187(a)(12), would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, and I hereby suspend entry into the United States, as immigrants and nonimmigrants, of such persons for 90 days from the date of this order.” And it targets Syrians specifically. “I hereby proclaim that the entry of nationals of Syria as refugees is detrimental to the interests of the United States and thus suspend any such entry until such time as I have determined that sufficient changes have been made to the USRAP to ensure that admission of Syrian refugees is consistent with the national interest.”

Searching through INA 8 the countries of concern are defined “The order bars all people hailing from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.”

The restrictions used to be for only four of the seven countries, but the Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act of 2015 added Libya, Somalia, and Yemen as three countries of concern,

The word Muslim is never mentioned in the order, nor is Muslim Majority countries.

The total population in the seven countries mentioned is: Iraq 31million, Iran 75, Libya 6, Somalia 9, Sudan 39 , Syria 21 and Yemen about 24 million, for a total of 205 million out of a total Muslim population of 1.7 billion in the world. That means that 88% of all Muslims are not affected by this 90 day review, only Syrian refugees are mentioned, and only that the review will take more than 90 days and require further executive and legislative action.

The executive order was written in haste, and it would have been better if the wording had been “suspend issuing or renewing entry visas” rather than “suspend entry”. This is what I think is at the core of what the federal judge’s objection, ordering a stay on the executive order, not that all the nations mentioned are Islamic.

The South China Morning Post reported on Thursday that U. S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping “are set to jointly announce their ratification” of the Paris Climate Treaty when they meet on 2nd September before the G-20 Summit. This is curious because ratifying treaties in the United States requires a two-thirds vote of the Senate.

Here is the language from Article Two, Section Two, Clause Two of the U. S. Constitution: “[The President] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur.”

The article by Li Jing references this curious requirement: “There are still some uncertainties from the US side due to the complicated US system in ratifying such a treaty, but the announcement is still quite likely to be ready by Sept 2,” said a source, who declined to be named.

In China’s Communist Party dictatorship, ratification merely requires their Maximum Leader to say, “So be it.”

Later in the article, Li Jing again tries to explain the inscrutable U. S. methods for ratifying a treaty: “US law allows the nation to join international agreements in a number of ways, including through the authority of the president.”

Lo and behold, the President of the United States can ratify a treaty in the same way as China’s Maximum Leader. He merely has to say the magic words, “So be it.” And it is so. Who knew that President Barack Obama has become our Maximum Leader, or perhaps I should say our dear Maximum Leader?

Obama has a reliable record of failures. When he advocates a certain policy and resorts to threats, the opposite occurs.

The Obama administration was going all out to see that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was defeated in the 2015 Israeli election, but the campaign of veiled threats and anonymous leaks backfired: Instead of sinking in the polls, Netanyahu rose steadily, and after someone from Obama’s “inner circle” threatened that if Israel reelected Netanyahy they would “pay a price”, Netanyahu won easily.

President Obama visited Britain in advance of the U.K. EU referendum and strongly advocated for Britain to stay in the EU, warning that if they left they would be at “the back of the queue” for a U.S. trade deal. According to polls taken just before and just after Obama’s visit, that recommendation alone lead to a 3 to 5 point uptick in favor of Brexit.advocated for Britain to stay in the EU, warning that if they left they would be at “the back of the queue” for a U.S. trade deal. According to polls taken just before and just after Obama’s visit, that recommendation alone lead to a 3 to 5 point uptick in favor of Brexit.

But nowhere is his negative charisma more evident than in the case of gun control. Every tragedy, from the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords, to the Orlando Massacre the answer was always the same: Gun control. The reaction was always the opposite: A spike in gun sales. This stock chart of Smith and Wesson proves the point:

At the time of the election of Obama the stock hovered around 2. It is now around 25, a more than tenfold increase!

Bottom: A chart of gun sales:

This leads to verse 89 of the Obama impeachment song (as if sung by President Barack Hussein Obama to the tune of “Please release me, let me go”)

President Obama visited Britain recently and advocated strongly for Britain to stay in the EU, warning that if they left they would be at “the back of the queue” for a U.S. trade deal. According to polls taken just before and just after Obama’s visit, that recommendation alone lead to a 3 to 5 point uptick in favor of Brexit.

The Brits did bid EU adieu,

and went “to the back of the queue.”

As Obama chimed in

to “help” Cameron win.

all polls did go widely askew.

The results are in: After a long night of vote counting, the final results have been issued: 51.9% of voters chose to leave the EU, while 48.1% wanted to remain.